The Case Files of Jeweller Richard ep1 – Irina is Boring

Have you guys ever read The Casual Vacancy. It’s a novel J,K, Rowling published after finishing the Harry Potter series. It’s a slightly sleepy suburban mystery which looks into the themes of class inequality, the prevalence and impact of the drug trade on  common individuals and other social issues without every taking to hard a stand or even incorporating much action.

I really liked it. Apparently the book has earned some accolades but I’m the only person I know who enjoyed it. Most people told me it was boring. That thing is I can’t argue with that. It really was kind of boring. It’s just that I occasionally like somewhat boring fiction. I’m not sure what that says about me.

This is just going to be a brief review of episode 1 of The Case Files of Jeweller Richard. The series is made by Shuka and as I have loved all the studios’ shows so far, I was excited for this one and convinced Karandi to review it with me. So starting at episode 2 we will be jointly reviewing on 100 Word Anime. I’ll just keep the galleries here cause I have issues.

As you may have gathered from my opening paragraphs, so far The Case Files of Jeweller Richard are likely to be called boring by some. Not offensively so or anything just sort of unexciting. As the title suggests, the opening episode was a fairly harmless investigation into a long cold theft case with some personal stakes for our main character Seigi (the brunette).

We didn’t get to see much forensics as the usual pseudo science and paper trail investigations got traded in for a rather touching slice of regional Japanese history. I’m not very well versed in the history of common day to day. I learned the big things, you know, wars, political movements, rise and falls of empires, but I never found out about what a day in the life of an average person in a particular place was like a 100 years ago, or even 50.

I think maybe that’s why I was never as taken with history in school as I thought I should be. It was always about the “big” things and I have always preferred the little stories.

So yeah…not that much happened in the opening episode of The Case Files of Jeweller Richard. We found out that Richard is Japanese born to foreign parents, that Seigi’s grandmother was a pick pocket by necessity and that a ring she stole and kept as a reminder of her faults her whole life was in fact a symbol of hopelessness to the rightful owner who was glad to be rid of it.

But what we actually found out was that jewellery is a world inextricably linked with crime and that Richard is well aware of that and equipped to deal with it. That Seigi is a good guy with family issues but a willingness to move forward that makes him the sort of fellow you want on your side. And that the series is likely to strive for just a bit of realism and some sentimentality with mysteries woven through.

I forgot to mention, Richard offers Seigi a job at the end so they’ll be working together from now on! Shock and awe!!!

In tone and even execution, it actually reminded me of Beautiful Bones: Sakurako’s Investigation. You can do worse than being compared to Beautiful Bones. So while this is probably going to be called a slow start by a lot of people (if they bother watching it at all), it’s exactly the sort of boring I happen to enjoy and I do look forward to the rest of the series.